The Most Important Sale In Life - Image

Dossier

Ilgiz Valinurov - President and Founder of the Corporation of Recruitment Agencies Business Connection (Moscow), President of the Guild of Recruiters, instructor of the special course "Strategic Human Resource Management" of the President's program of management training for Russia.

OUR PSYCHOLOGY: Now there are large-scale reductions in banks - thirty-five thousand people have already been laid off, and this is not the limit. They all considered themselves to be tough specialists, but they were thrown out as unnecessary. How to survive such a situation without loss, or maybe even with a gain for yourself?

ILGIZ VALINUROV: Last Saturday I conducted five career consultations for top managers of banks with salaries of over 400 thousand. All of them have lost their jobs or are on the verge of being fired. If several years ago they wanted salary growth, promotion, moving to larger banks, now their task is to find at least some job, get at least some bank, or even not necessarily the banking sector, but continue to work and earn. Oddly enough, their current problems are not connected with the crisis, not with changes in the labor market, but with the fact that they got rid of them: they turned out to be not the best employees at their current place of work.

NP: We were not in the best place and at the best time

IV: Or they chose the wrong company. Sometimes I talk to top managers who do not know how to write a resume and how to get an interview; they proudly say: “You know, I never looked for a job, I was always invited by people who know me. I was invited to interesting companies, I came at the invitation of friends. " To such a person, I say: “You are the biggest loser in the world. You have never even tried to manage your career, to think about where you want to go. You were ruled by others and you considered it a success. It's time to understand who is a worthy employer for you, and to do everything possible and impossible to get to him, and not to friends or acquaintances."

NP: A person comes to you. He used to receive four hundred thousand, now no one takes him. He has an identity crisis. Maybe he should first go not to you, but to a psychotherapist? You won't solve his existential problems, will you?

IV: I would not call employment an “existential issue”. Finding a job is the most important sale of your life. This is more serious than selling something for millions of dollars. When you sell yourself to an employer, this determines for the next few years (for someone for three years, for someone for five, for someone more), what time you will wake up in the morning, what traffic jams you will be in, what tasks to solve …

NP: The word "sale" is jarring. There is in him some kind of submission and servility. Maybe it's better to call the relationship with the employer a partnership?

I. V.: In general, a correct sale is when the customer is satisfied with the purchase. And about the metaphor of "partnership" - they negotiate with the strong, and dictate the terms to the weak. If you do not sell yourself, do not present yourself correctly, do not show your strength - you will be manipulated, you will not be considered. Any interview is a negotiation. In negotiations, you need to have a strong position, to understand why you came. They often tell me: “I told everything about myself, but they didn’t take me.” There is no need to tell, you need to negotiate, you need to ask questions yourself, be active, show your strength. When the employer applies some elements of the stress interview during the interview, asks tough questions - this is an attempt to understand how much the applicant is holding a punch. This is totally normal.

NP: Let's say a person comes to you with low self-esteem. The first, second month of job search, he may be swaggering. So…

I. V.: How do we work with this? We begin to analyze the situation: what the candidate did in order to get the job, and what he did wrong. We are looking for the mistakes that he made, together with him we work through them. For example, we start by identifying industries of interest to the candidate with the candidate. For example, what is he interested in jewelry? Well, he says: there is gold, a huge salary. I explain that in general there is no big salary there and there is no need to build illusions. Or a girl comes and says: "I want to work in the tourism business." - "Why?" - "There are many trips." There are no trips there! You sit in the office selling tours. First you need to understand where you want to go.

Next, we begin to form its target lists, that is, a list of interesting companies in the selected sector, for example, banking. Bankers' ambitions are usually off scale: if I worked in the top 10 banks, then I will not go below ten. This is the case in every industry. And when a person has this list of ten banks in front of him, I say - get out the phone, we will call. Look, here it says "Sberbank", you have been in the banking sector for twenty years, you definitely have an acquaintance who worked there. And suddenly it turns out that in half of the banks where he wants to go, there are such acquaintances.

NP: The topic of link management comes up

IV: Of course. Further, we begin to pay attention to any information that concerns banks of interest to us. For example, "Sberbank" opens some new direction, the article was published in RBC, such and such names are indicated, such and such a head of the department. We need to find this manager on Facebook, write to him directly. Why wait for a million interviews through staffing agencies, through HRs?

NP: So you can always find shorter routes?

IV: When you see an indirect vacancy, you need to understand who your future leader is and contact him. First, collect information on him, find out where he worked before. Most likely you will have a mutual friend with him. You need to find a bridge that will connect you with it. And call: “Ivan Ivanovich, hello. I saw that you have a vacancy. You have one of my best high school friends as a friend on Facebook, and he spoke very well of you. I would like to meet with you personally. " How can you refuse a person if you have mutual friends? Such elementary actions are already enough to advance more than half.

NP: And overtake other candidates

I. V.: I have been professionally recruiting for seventeen years and I see every day how even top candidates make mistakes. The recent vacancy we closed is an HR director with a salary of over half a million. There was the first interview, then the second, the third. In the second interview, the candidate made a mistake. I had concerns that the employer might refuse it. But we worked with him, and he passed. What was the mistake? When the candidate successfully passed the first interview, his wings grew, and his grip was lost. He felt that he had already been accepted, it seemed to him that the issue was resolved. At the second interview, candidates always relax, consider it formal. And this is not so: every next interview you have to do better than the last.

NP: Let's talk about the psychological characteristics of the behavior of people who were fired. It is probably much harder for them to come to an interview and pass it successfully than a person with a job. What would you recommend?

IV: First of all, the best thing is not to get into a situation where you have been looking for a job for several months. Secondly, if you find yourself in such a situation, then you always need to prepare for an interview, study the employer, his interests, development plans, show your maximum readiness to work in the company. The key motive of the employer should also be understood. Take a candidate for a marketing director position, for example. What exactly does this company need a CMO for? To enter international markets. Then you need to sell your international experience. Or do they want to launch a Russian brand in a crowded segment? Then you need to focus on this.

NP: In other words, you need to study the employer's needs and show that you can address those needs

I. V.: Yes, then there will be inner confidence, and you will pass this interview.

NP: Do you recommend psychotherapy for clients?

IV: Probably, psychotherapy can be valuable and useful, but I would still recommend career coaching, because psychotherapy is about the past, and coaching is about the future. As Dale Carnegie said, “Why cut sawdust? Why talk about what has passed? Let's talk about what will happen tomorrow. Let's think about how we can prepare ourselves today to be successful tomorrow."

NP: Recent studies have shown that a person consumes a thousand times more information than the part of the brain that is responsible for consciousness can process. All the unconscious is somewhere, and it controls us. For example, I saw a huge number of depressed bankers, nervous sales managers. They sell well, but they are deeply unhappy people. Maybe a crisis is the best time to rethink what you need in life?

I. V.: I agree with that. The crisis should be used to rethink oneself, but I would do it more often than crises happen.

NP: Don't you think that this crisis is forever? What is happening now, taking into account macroeconomic and political risks, is not the crisis of 1998, 2008, but the apocalypse. If you look at social networks, people have the feeling that this is the final phase of the world in which we live, but many do not notice this, because the money has not yet run out

IV: I think that if you take this as an apocalypse, then this is how it will be for you. And if you perceive it as a new stage, then it will be something different.

NP: Have you noticed some kind of burnout in people? That they need to get a job just because they have accumulated obligations (credit or to the family)?

IV: A person has several roles at the same time. He may pretend to be poor in front of colleagues who have not been fired. He can pretend to be unhappy in front of children, whom he cannot buy the same toys as a year ago. But when he comes to me, I make him a potential winner and an ideal candidate, so they play different roles for me. Very important point: I usually have one or at most two meetings. I say: “Guys, if after the first meeting, having received the required volume of tasks, you don’t do any further yourself, it’s useless to work. The second meeting can take place when you have passed several stages of the interview and it remains to go through the final stage; need advice on how to play the final chord. " I immediately explain that, as a psychotherapist, I will not meet and heal about my career every week.

NP: Yes, this is already the competence of other people. Healthy careerists need you. Those who are depressed need another specialist

IV: For those who are depressed, I give one chance to improve.

NP: Tough

IV: Strategy is not only what we do, but also what we don’t do.